Red and Black 2

"Approaching alicorn hoard! Everyling, defend the hive!"

That utterance, which may as well have been a warning siren, echoed throughout every single tunnel of the hive, piercing the ears of everyling within. Some were rushing to the top and the hole punched in the side, pouring out with wings already buzzing madly to join their already-gathered brethren. The only one who stayed inside was Thorax, who was pacing about the sick bay with shaky legs before his Equestrian visitors.

"A-a hoard?" he stammered, his elytra shivering as he paced. "H-how big is it? C-can't w-we talk it out with them?"

"Well… we dunno the size of this hoard, but we do know they probably ain't here to negotiate anything other than slavery," Ember piped up, shaking her head sadly. She stopped Thorax in his tracks by lifting a tentacle and patting him on the withers with it. "We'll help your changelings take care of it. Just stay here and watch Jonathan and Charlotte. The hoard'll be pushed back before you know it."

Thorax noticed that, throughout her tirade, Ember sounded no more convinced of her own words than he was confident of the situation. "A-are you sure? Y-you could be way over your heads in this…" he pointed out, frowning.

"We're sure," Rekka chimed in. With that, the group rushed out of the nearest hole as one, leaving just him, Jonathan, and Charlotte in the sick bay.

"I hope they'll be alright…" Thorax mumbled to himself, watching the hole the group ran into.

Yet even he did not sound particularly sure of himself.

*********

The moment the group stepped to the edge of the massive hole was the same moment their jaws dropped open in unison. A sea of the red and black monsters was marching in the distance, compacted tightly into a massive herd; there had to be at least thousands present and accounted for. All were armed with various weapons and they had gold and silver armor adorning their bodies. As if that weren't enough, at least four airships were present and hovering behind the oncoming tide, each one bearing rainbows, flapping wings and a bust of an alicorn.

And those airships also happened to have visible cannons on the decks and their undersides, with every single barrel pointed at the hive. Foxfire was the first to reel in her jaw and speak, "I-I'm dreaming, right? Wh-when did they learn how to pilot airships?!"

Ember unfurled her tentacles and summoned her weapons in flashes of light, using her extra limbs to grip their shafts as soon as they materialized. Her limbs slithered, forming barbs and oozing poisonous fluid, and shifted their grip before they lathered the clear substance onto various blades. "Looks like they upped the ante. Who goes on the ground, and who goes after the airships?" she asked.

A few changelings flew over to the group, three with carriages not unlike those of Equestrian craftsponyship attached to their middles. These changelings turned so the carriages hovered before their guests, and instantly Rekka and Tenmei jumped into one. Trigger and Distrance jumped in the second with their gun, and Koto hopped into the last one. They took off into the air again after that, followed in very short order by Nagare and Yuuki.

Foxfire groaned in exasperation. "I guess we're the ground unit then," she hissed, turning to Patient. "Ember's got a gold allergy, and look at what those wankers are packing."

“No fuckin’ way…” Patient mumbled to himself as he saw a small flock of alicorns taking to the air to battle the changeling defenders; they had gold feathers on their wings and some he could've sworn had more than one horn on their heads.

"Yes fuckin' way," Foxfire hissed, lifting a hoof to gesture to Ember's shortened tentacle, which had scabbed over sometime yesterday. "She had to do surgery on herself because she broke out in something worse than hives! That shit is poison to her."

Patient stood for only a moment in thought, coming up with a battle plan as he saw the changelings getting ripped to pieces in the air by multi-horned alicorns wielding fiery swords. Those same alicorns then met with a few laser volleys from Rekka, and those who dodged the death-rays were mopped up by a boomerang, some crossbow bolts, and several strikes of a sword from Nagare.

He turned to Ember. "You still good to fight?" With that, she nodded and gave a sly grin.

As the alicorns who were hit with bolts were dealt with, Nagare grasped them to keep them from plummeting. He deftly plucked the projectiles out and used his tail to hold them before letting the alicorns drop to their deaths. The bolts he couldn't hold right away were scooped up by Yuuki, who was oddly withholding using her yo-yo for the moment.

Patient turned to his oldest friends and yelled with all of his might, “Trig, Dis; use that machine gun of yours to provide air support! They can’t dodge bullets!”

“When are you the one giving orders?” Trigger laughed as he joined Distrance to set up their Maxim gun, pointing it outwards into the hole in the hive wall.

Within seconds, they’ve finally set the weapon up and Trigger began feeding the gun ammunition while Distrance pulled the weapon's barrel towards the alicorns. He yanked on the oversized, hoof-friendly trigger when his first airborne target was within his sights; the sky was filled with gunshots, deafening everypony and gorily ripping through a flock of alicorns as though they were paper.

But the airships and the hoard on the ground kept getting closer, undeterred and ignored until Foxfire spoke. "Looks like we have no choice. Let's get to the ground and fuck up some assholes!" With that, her horn glowed and the three of them vanished from the hole in a burst of blue light, only to reappear on the ground floor of the hive seconds later.

As Trigger whooped and hollered at the carnage he and Distrance were causing, the remaining crew had adjusted themselves to the fact they were now in the bottom level of the hive, where a majority of the worker changelings have gathered for shelter. They buzzed about and gave the strike team plenty of room to advance towards the entrance.

“Kill them all!” They could hear many of the changelings shout as they galloped along. But even the shouts died down once they made it outside, taking just a second to assess the ground forces.

Yet more golden alicorns were fast encroaching, as if eager to greet them. Foxfire turned to Ember and her horn lit up again, bathing her in blue flames that did not melt her armor or do anything of the sort. "You're lucky my magic is powered by the love the other changelings are sharing. Otherwise, the spell would have died out seconds after casting," she chirped.

Ember nodded. "And it'll burn any gold I come in contact with, right?" she asked in a hopeful voice.

Foxfire nodded back. "Hopefully," she replied, turning back to the incoming horde. "You two ready?"

“Ready!” Patient grinned toothily and evilly. He was ready to spill blood for the blood god! His head turned upward again. “Rekka! Shoot at those airships! I wanna feast on alicorn flesh!!”

"Hai!" Rekka yelled back, directing his blaster towards the nearest vessel. He fired another volley, but gaped as the ships came alive with runes that formed violet barriers. The domes reflected his lasers easily, though in a way that ended up coming down onto the alicorns rather than the changelings. "Shit! These guys learned a lot from Patchy!"

"Great, reflective airships… and Rekka's beams aren't enough to cut it…" Foxfire groaned, eyes narrowing at the display. She turned to the horde again. "Let's lower the morale of the ones holed up in the blimps by slaughtering their kin. Maybe they'll wise up and turn back." She charged forward, rushing to meet the alicorns head-on. Fire burst around her and cloaked her, almost forming into a large ball that scorched the first alicorn it came into contact with. Several more backed off, opting instead to gallop to Patient and Ember.

"I swear by Godcat I will fuck you all up!" Ember yelled, surging forward with weapons flailing. One alicorn was impaled in the face by a spear, another got his head lopped off by an axe, and a third was skewered in the barrel by a sword. Those who wore gold that came close to contact screamed as their metal heated up and melted away, scalding their flesh in the process thanks to Foxfire's spell.

Patient watched as a huge swarm of alicorns encroached on their position, even as Foxfire ran around ablaze and torching all of the monstrosities she could in her wake. Ember was soon surrounded, however, and as she felled three alicorns, twelve more came to replace the fallen. Within seconds she was struggling to keep up; even with her third eye joining the fray and charging and firing lasers of its own, it did little to dent the tide. Another few seconds passed, and he could not even see her.

Something within Patient snapped once again. His vision turned blood red. His horn glowed, its aura likewise turning crimson.

”Blood for the blood god!!” Patient roared as he charged forward, magically swinging his bardiche left and right, slashing through multiple alicorns at a time with each strike.

Blood sprayed high into the air as dismembered limbs, fragments of bone, and organs fell to the ground, much to the agony and despair of the oncoming horde of degenerates. Patient let out a terrifying battle cry as he cleft a quadruple-horned alicorn in twain.

“Comrades! Don’t let this fascist capitalist get the better of us—” one of the alicorns tried to rally the others, but was quickly torn to pieces by Patient, who only continued on his rampage and tore through the horde with ease. Patient went on until he caught sight of Ember, still cleaving her way through the alicorns herself, and those she didn't fatally wound with stabbings, flames and lasers aplenty were soon taken care of by her venom.

One incredibly foolish soul tried and succeeded in mounting her, only to scream as his nethers immediately bled and his entire stomach caught fire right after. He backed away with a gaping hole where his dick used to be, and the organ was spit out by Ember's own nethers. For his trouble, he got jabbed in the face with a pike. "I got teeth in my vagina, fucker!" Ember yelled, still slashing and hacking like nothing had happened. She turned to Patient briefly as he carved a path to her and nodded with a knowing smile.

"I'm fine," she seemed to say.

Patient nodded and used magic to rip a nearby alicorn’s head in half vertically with a gory tear; he immediately spun around and bucked at the now dead pony and continued hacking and slashing. Foxfire darted past them, scorching more alicorns that were about to attack the duo. Any alicorns that could fly and were already flying started divebombing towards them, with some dying by the changelings' hooves and weapons in the process.

Trigger and Distrance tried shooting at the airships, but this yielded the same effect as it had with Rekka's lasers. The airships responded by firing a volley of magic blasts from their cannons, which screamed past the group and right to the hive.

"I don't care if I'm putting myself in danger, I am putting up a shield, goddamnit!" a feminine voice called out from the hive. Trigger and Distrance's eyes went wide, and they turned to the hive to find a green speck, a red speck, and a blue speck standing atop the crow's nest. Within seconds a massive square-shaped shield enveloped the hive, right as the volley would have otherwise connected with its walls. They did not pierce the shield, or even penetrate it; rather, the cannon shots disintegrated altogether.

"Is that…" Trigger began, but was cut off when another voice came from the nest, barely audible in the carnage.

"Charlotte's shield can't block close potshots; she can only hold off the airships for so long! Get cracking already!" Jonathan yelled out.

Distrance's face hardened. "What do we do now?" he grumbled, seeing some of the alicorns on the ground bypass the shield like it wasn't even there. They started scaling to the top of the nest, evidently having heard Jonathan's shout and seemingly intent to do something about it. The green speck, whom he presumed was Thorax, started blasting the ones that came close, making the alicorns crackle in green flames. Those that got past that were felled anyway, with Jonathan rushing to greet them and use something to cleave the monsters in gory halves.

"Looks like our crippled pegasus has that matter settled already," Trigger mumbled, turning to Rekka's carriage. He shouted, "You think the shields may be the same?"

Just as that utterance reached his ears, a switch flicked on in Rekka's head. He turned to the shield Charlotte had cast, and immediately noticed runes dotting its frame. He turned back to the airships and studied them closely. "Not a match…" he grumbled, racking his brain for a way to stop the airships before the shield around the hive gave out. Another volley from the airborne vessels whizzed past him and Tenmei, striking at the barrier before vaporizing.

He turned to Yuuki and Nagare as they came up next to him, fistfuls and tailfuls of crossbow bolts with them. The two wasted no time dropping the bolts in their carriage. Rekka turned his gaze onto Tenmei. "Hold your fire, Ten, unless you want to aim below."

"Hai," Tenmei replied, whereupon Nagare and Yuuki took to hovering next to them.

"C'mon… what do we do…" Rekka grumbled, half-tempted to lift his free hoof and hit himself in the head with it to get the gears to start turning. "Ships eat everything we throw at them…" A lightbulb went off in his head, and his horn fizzled with flames in response. "I got it!" He turned to the changeling piloting his carriage. "Get us closer to the airships," he ordered.

The changeling turned to look at Rekka with wide eyes. "Are you crazy?!" he yelled. "You'll get killed!"

Rekka donned a wicked smirk. "Me and my group ain't called the Special Task Force for nothing, bub. If we can't take the ships out of the picture from the outside…" He turned to Koto's carriage. "You ready to hijack a ship?" he yelled.

Koto turned to him with an eager grin. She nodded mutely as another volley from the ships sailed past her to land on the barrier. Rekka then turned to Trigger and Distrance's carriage. "You two, do you have ship-driving experience?" he asked.

The two gunners looked at each other before turning back to Rekka and shaking their heads. Rekka frowned. "Well, we're gonna need a pilot with what I have in mind. Have you two ridden an airship before?" he asked.

*********

Asterion Lux and Erebus circled around one of the airships, both with horns flickering in light. The cannons tracked their every move, though the ones on the deck could go no further backward than the hull. The shield formed intermittently, almost in time with their circling.

On, off, on, off. It was so in tune Erebus wondered if there was some sort of switch being flicked left and right. "Lux, what the hell are we doing?" he asked.

Asterion's face hardened, and he said nothing in reply. He continued to watch the flickering shield of the airship he and Erebus constantly circled, though sometimes his eyes turned to the barrier Charlotte had cast. Each time he turned to the hive, the barrier dimmed little by little, and soon enough so too was it flickering. "We have to be quick. Whoever cast the barrier over our home hasn't much strength left," he hissed ominously. "Which means we haven't much time."

Erebus was close to throwing his forelegs in the air, and he would have done so had the cannons not tailed them nigh-incessantly. "As if things couldn't get worse…" he mumbled. He turned to the hive and frowned as the barrier finally gave out, and he barely saw a blue speck slumping atop the crow's nest. However, another barrier went up in seconds, just in time to absorb another cannon-volley.

This barrier was distinctly teal in color, and it did not falter in the slightest. In addition to that, any alicorns who managed to bypass the previous barrier were violently ejected off of the hive's surface with more blasts of similarly-colored magic. "I'll buy you some time! Stop those airships at all costs!" Thorax shouted, his voice echoing louder than the ongoing battle. Erebus guessed it was magically amplified.

Erebus smiled and turned to Asterion. "You heard the king," he snorted. Asterion nodded mutely, and he turned to the cannons again before noticing that every single one was now pointing sharply downwards. His gaze then followed at what they were pointing to—the ball of death that was Foxfire, circling Patient and Ember with zig-zagging, erratic steps that did little to dent the flood of alicorns surrounding them.

The cannons fired, their volley racing downward to meet up with the two Surgeons stuck on the ground. Before the attack could connect, a bright flash of blue light enveloped them and Foxfire, leaving a scorch mark in its wake. They reappeared on the other side of the tide seconds later, and charged into the unguarded rear to further disorient the alicorns. The cannons followed them and fired, but Foxfire and her compatriots vanished once again in another blinding flash.

Asterion watched as the trio appeared in another flash of light, dead-center of the horde. Then something clicked in his head. "Erebus, it seems we have a distraction for the cannons," he murmured, and turned back to the vessel as it launched another volley at the teleporting terrors who were slaughtering their brethren left and right. At the moment of firing, the shield around the ship gave way entirely, only to go back up again seconds later.

His eyes fell onto the hull, and he flew to it as the ship fired once more. Erebus saw him approach the ship and followed him, and he saw the shield flickering again. The ship went into firing overdrive as they got closer, but this only ensured that the shield stayed down. Asterion reached a window and smashed it with a hoof before flying inside, and shortly thereafter a green flash exploded in the hull, illuminating all the windows as another alicorn went flying out with smoldering wings.

"Stop him!" another alicorn cried as Erebus threw himself into the window, finding himself in a trashed-beyond-compare lounge. Wallpaper was peeling, garbage was strewn about, the ceiling was caked in a white crust whose origins he didn't want to question, and there were fresh cockroach bodies all around. In the middle of it all, Asterion was just getting finished rending two alicorns to naught but ash with green flames.

Erebus looked around the lounge, and spotted a clutter of tables and chairs piled high towards a wall that lacked windows at the southern end of the room. His horn lit up and he grasped the furniture clutter with his magic, and pulled them aside one by one, carelessly tossing the obstacles out the windows as he did so. Within a minute he cleared the clutter to reveal a hatch with a ladder going down into a dark hole, though it was warped by rust and pressure. "Lux, look," he beckoned.

His utterance caused Asterion to turn to him with a brow raised. The two exchanged glances and mutely trotted over to the ladder, and Asterion clambered on first, though he didn't go down. Rather, once he took hold of the rails, he bounced in place, causing the ladder to groan in protest with each shake. Still, it held his weight, and he nodded in satisfaction. With that, he went down into whatever was beyond, leaving Erebus to follow him.

“This is so gay. I wanna be down there, killing those bugs!” an alicorn huffed indignantly without paying any attention to the ladder; he sat bored out of his wits at a console with a steering wheel and a massive screen showing the hive, twisting knobs and pressing buttons as the engine continued to whir. Around him, more trash was strewn about, and he was accompanied by another few alicorns.

“Same! I told my girlfriend that I would bring back a hundred bug scalps, and that fracking pegasus!” another alicorn hissed, garnering a nod from a third with his utterance.

Asterion deftly landed on the floor silently, smiling as the alicorns paid him no heed whatsoever. Erebus came in shortly thereafter, his brows raising at the display. They waited for the moment in which they would be noticed, and they looked to the side of the room to find three more emaciated ponies mutely looking at them. On closer inspection, one was an earth pony stallion with a greying brown, bowl-cut mane and a beige coat, and the other two were mares who weren't alicorns.

One of the two mares, a green-coated unicorn with a purple mane and a bonnet on her head, mouthed something so rigidly Asterion had to do a double-take to confirm her lips moved. "Is Jonathan alright?" she mutely asked. She smiled when she got a mute nod in return.

The other mare, a purple pegasus with a darker mane and wings shaved bare, turned to one of the alicorns and scowled before lifting a cracked hoof. "Sick 'em," she seemed to command.

The earth stallion then stood up abruptly and shouted, his utterance causing the alicorns to finally notice their visitors in the process, "We're saved at last! We can leave this acursed vessel behind!"

"Saved? No, they're gonna corrupt you!" one of the alicorns cried, and he made to say something else when Asterion's horn glowed. Within seconds that alicorn was expelling green flames from his mouth, screaming in agony and spasming in place as he felt his insides get cooked. It took him just minutes to fall over, smoking from the mouth and nostrils. This caused the alicorn piloting the vessel to jump and hit a big red button, and the ship shook before runes lit up and faded away.

Then the unicorn stood up, her horn glowing in a dark purple aura. She turned to one of the other alicorns, and her face hardened slightly. "If you'll excuse me, my sister, and Vincent…" she trailed off, before the trio vanished in a flash of blinding purple light that made the alicorn at the console wince with a cry of shock. The screen at the console showed a similar light exploding at the top of the hive, and Asterion's grin widened as he saw three more specks joining the first.

"Oh, good thing the hostages are safe…" Erebus chirped before turning to the alicorn the green mare glowered at. His horn crackled again, and green fire erupted spontaneously around the alicorn before engulfing him. Within seconds he was naught but charred bones and ash, which fell into a pile once the flames died. The two changelings then turned to the pilot, their smiles falling to be replaced with firm, disapproving frowns.

The pilot's eyes went wide, and he turned to the button his hoof had pushed. It was labeled 'anti-magic shield.' "Oh no… ohnoohnoohno…" he murmured frantically, just before a golden laser shot across the screen, scoring the deck of the ship and causing bits of it to catch fire. He twisted to look at the two changelings, and scowled at them. "You made the hostages run away!" he shrieked accusingly, only to be lifted up in the air by dual auras.

"No, that was your doing," Asterion corrected in a firm, no-nonsense tone of voice. "Now, if you'll excuse us… we're taking over from here." With that, the alicorn found himself engulfed in green flames, screaming piercingly for minutes on end. Only when the fires finished converting his flesh to ash was he released. Erebus looked around the room and snorted.

"Want me to clean up a bit?" Erebus asked, frowning.

Asterion shook his head and trotted to the console. "Not until the battle is over," he replied grimly.